He admits he’s had a long off-season but Gold Coast captain Nate Myles says the spirit is largely positive at the Titans going into their NRL campaign.
The embattled Titans held their season launch on the Gold Coast on Thursday night, after a week where the club was dragged into a drugs scandal and then underwent a rapid-fire takeover by the NRL.
Notably absent from the launch were the five players who have been stood down after they were served notices to appear in court on charges of supplying and possessing cocaine.
But Myles says the NRL takeover and the groundswell of commitment from the club’s sponsors and supporters had given the team heart heading into their season opener against Wests Tigers on March 7.
“The last few days have really helped our boys as a playing group and the club in general,” Myles told AAP.
“The NRL stepping in, especially through the playing group, it’s injected a lot of confidence and enabled the boys to focus on playing football.”
Myles enters this year as the club’s sole captain after Greg Bird, one of the five players embroiled in the cocaine saga, was stripped of his co-captaincy role for a separate public urination incident during his wedding celebrations in December.
Myles has also been recovering from surgery and supporting his wife Tessa James as she underwent chemotherapy to treat Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“I’ve been pretty lucky mate, I just handle things as they come and just try to keep moving forward,” he said.
“If you stand back and look at things for too long you probably start to notice too many things. I’ve been pretty good.
“It hasn’t been the fastest six months, but it’s been busy.”
Myles also said his thoughts were with suspended teammates Bird, Dave Taylor, Beau Falloon, Kalifa Faifai Loa and Jamie Dowling.
He echoed coach Neil Henry’s sentiment that the five should be allowed to return to first team duties after their initial court appearances.
“We look at them as teammates and we definitely see that as a no-brainer for us,” Myles said.
“If we’re starting to think about when they’re returning or if they will be returning we’re going to let a couple of things slip by.”
The Titans turned one negative into a positive at the launch, announcing the vacant major sponsor’s space on the team’s shirts will carry the logo of the Ronald McDonald House charity until a sponsor can be found.
Titans chief executive Graham Annesley told attendees it had obviously been a trying period but it had also produced an “unbelievable” level of community support.
“To everyone one of the members in the room, that’s the kind of passion that you exude, week-in and week-out, win, lose or draw, that’s the kind of passion we want to build on for 2015 and help our team through this current season,” Annesley said.
